Does meditation lead to changed perception and knowledge?

I do not know about other persons but I know about me. From my earliest memory (age five) my mind was always thinking (brooding) about one thing or another. I do not recall ever having a mind with no ideas and concepts in it.

If I see something I think about it. I judge it as good or bad. I do not simply see it and let it be without having an opinion of it been good or bad.

When I judge people good and say so they obviously like it than when I judge them as bad. But the fact that I am judging them good or bad is a problem. Why should I even try judging people?

What do I know about the person standing in front of me? Very little. If that is the case why should I judge him as good or bad? I am really not judging him as good or bad but merely projecting my views of good or bad to him. When I say that somebody is good or bad I really did not say anything relevant about him for I do not know him and probably will never know him since it would take me a life time of studying him for me to begin to understand him.

And who gave me the right to judge me and other people? I did not create me and other people so why do I dare to judge people as good or bad?

To judge people means that I am playing God the creator. I am usurping the function of the creator when I judge me or other people as good or bad; this is hubris of the first order; I am arrogant in judging people as good or bad; humility requires me to not judge any one as good or bad!

Judging people is presumptive for it assumes to know what is independently good or bad, which I do not know.

The same goes for whatever I say about animals, plants, rocks, stars, galaxies and the entire universe. I really do not have sufficient information on any aspect of phenomena to say anything salient about it. I am merely projecting my ignorance to people and things when I say something about them.

The same goes for me. I do not know enough about me beyond the superficial aspects of me that I think that I know to judge me as either good or bad.

It would take possession of enormous amount of information on a thing's, or a person's past, present and future to be able to make a rational judgment about it or him. Yet, my mind obsessive-compulsively says things about what I see.

Whenever my mind says something, positive or negative about anything it sees it is wasting its time and ought to be silent. That is correct; my mind ought to be quiet rather than pretend to know what it is saying when it says something about me, other people and the things around me.

And since I say things despite having incomplete information on what I said, it can be said that despite what I say my mind is literally blank; I am merely making noise; I do not know enough to say anything worthwhile about anything.

My obsessive-compulsive thinking is an attempt to pretend to say something relevant about phenomena when in fact it is saying nothing meaningful about anything.

Honesty requires me to say nothing when I see anything, to say nothing about you, to say nothing about me and to say nothing about a tree or animal that I see.

Talking about seeing anything, that is, perception, how do I know that I am actually seeing anything at all? How do I know that what I see as there is really there? I do not have a way to ascertain that what I think that I see as there is there. For all I know I may well be dreaming and seeing what is not there as there. I cannot completely dismiss solipsism as hogwash or can I?

Perception is always colored by ones past experience; in perception one is actually projecting what is in one's mind to what one perceives.

Consider. I see what we call a cup before me. I call it a cup. How do I know that it is, in fact, a cup? I know that it is a cup because my society tells me that it is a cup.

But what is it outside what my social group taught me about it? Do I know about what it is apart from society's conception of it?

Society constructs what it calls reality. What reality itself is we do not know, at least, I do not know; maybe you know what reality is? If so could you tell me?

Who are you? Do you know who you are? Are you just your body and self-concept, ego and if not what else are you? Your answer is epistemological, so be very careful.

Since whenever I say something about me, people or anything I am merely projecting my ignorance to them why not simply say nothing about anything I see?

This is what I decided to do. So, when I see you or me or anything I simply accept that I do not know what I am seeing and that whatever I say about what I think that I see is really my thought about that thing and not the truth of what I am seeing.

The pursuit of truth asks me to just be honest and keep quiet and not say anything about what I think that I see. Thus, I try to keep my mind free of opinions and judgements about what phenomena are.

If I see you I resist saying anything about you. I resist saying that you are handsome or ugly. I just see you. I refuse to say that you exhibit good or bad behavior, for all those are my judgment; my judgement is based on limited information about you hence cannot yield the truth of who you are.

So, I see you and I keep my mind blank about who you are. Who are you? I do not know. Who am I? I do not know beyond the bunch of presuppositions and preconceptions that I learned from my past experience but the truth is that I do not know who I am or who you are or who other people are or what anything is or means. Thus, prudence requires me to just keep quiet.

Of course ideas do come into my mind when I see you or me or things but I quickly remind me that those ideas are based on insufficient knowledge of what things are or mean.

For example, I ask: how come Africans are so backward it is not funny. Looking at individual Africans and comparing them to white and Asian folks I do not see any difference yet Africans are the most backward people on planet earth.

Africa is the most badly governed continent. My mind would try to figure out the reasons for this dreadful situation. At some point I gave up trying to understand this dreadful situation, for all I was doing was positing opinions.

The fact is that neither I nor other people know why Africa seems a cursed continent where nothing good comes out of. May be there is a reason why Africa is what it currently is: a shit house. I do not know what that reason is.

And don't talk to me about how Europe underdeveloped Africa (Walter Rodney) for I make my living teaching social science and as such know most of the causal factors explained in explaining Africans backwardness. I know that those explanations are mere rationalizations not the truth. What is the truth? I do not know!

So what would happen if I went through a whole hour, day, week, month and year without saying anything, good or bad, about anything I see? My brain, mind would feel blank and I probably would see things differently?

MEDITATION

In meditation one tries to remove all apriori ideas one has about one's self, people and the world from one's mind and keep one's mind freed from thinking and concepts.

In Hindu and Buddhist meditation (which I learned) one is told to attain inner sense of silence, to have a mind without concepts and ideas in it.

Concepts and ideas are our mental constructs and not reality itself, what reality is we really do not know.

Hinduism and Buddhism say that if there are no ideas and concepts in one's mind that one is in a meditative state of mind. It says that when one wipes one's mind clean of all ego derived concepts and ideas and remain emptied of the self-concept, and concepts about other people and anything in the ego separated world and just be silent that one is no longer defining reality.

Oriental religions say that when the mind is emptied of our ideas about the nature of reality that reality would on its own dawn on one's mind; reality as it is not as one wants it to be.

As long as one defines reality it runs away from one but when one accepts ones ignorance and stop trying to tell reality what it is, remain silent reality would reveal itself to one.

Hinduism and Buddhism asks one to make one's mind empty of all concepts and thinking and that if one succeeds that one would be exposed to a different reality, a reality not of ones making and not the making of human society.

A course in miracles, Hinduism combined with Christian Gnosticism, says that if one attains inner silence that one would escape from our world and first see still a perceptual world, the world of light forms (it still has everything in our world but they are in light forms, it is our world purified by forgiveness and the Holy Spirit) and that if one also negates that world of light forms, for it is still an illusion for it is still perceptual, one escapes from the world of perceptions and reaches the world of knowledge.

The world of perception is always a world of judgement, a world based on opinions, a world based on what one wants to see, what one wants to see that takes on shape for one to see it; in perception what one believes shapes what one sees; indeed, what one sees is said to be ones projection and is not independent of ones beliefs and wishes.

If one does not have any desire of how things ought to be one is said to be able to escape from the perceptual world and enter a non-perceptual world, the world of unified state, the world of God; a world where one is one and concurrently all selves, all in formless oneness, the world of knowledge.

This is what I have heard; what I have heard, to me, is a mere hypothesis on the nature of reality and is not true until I have experienced it.

MY GOAL IS TO HAVE CHANGED PERCEPTION AND ULTIMATELY TO EXPERIENCE REALITY AS IT IS

My goal is to keep my mind blank, a mind freed from all conceptions of who I am, who you are, what things are and what reality is.

Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross etc. tell us that If I keep my mind blank that I am now reedy for God, through his Holy Spirit, to show me a different world, the world he made, a world of light forms and, ultimately, that I would experience the formless unified world of God.

I do not know if any of those teachings are true. What I do know is that whatever is my opinion is based on incomplete information so I am going to keep quiet about everything I see and live that way for a while and see what happens.

I will not say or do anything that immediately comes to my mind as to the nature of what I see or what I should do. I will just keep quiet until a higher power (Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ) tells me what is real and what isn't.

I am sick and tired of coloring the world with my perception (perception cannot give you the truth; the truth must be beyond perception).

Let us see how this new life style of not doing or saying anything by my perception but leaving things to be as they are, will pan out. I do not know what the outcome will be; what I know is that I am already feeling quiet and peaceful.

You could perform this experiment with me; let us do it for a month, and not take our opinions as fact. At the end of one month let us compare notes.

Our heuristic question is this: if the world is a product of our thinking, our perception, what would happen if one stops thinking and perceiving and stops projecting ones ideas into images and seeing them as the world outside one? If one has no wishes for things to be this or that way, has no self and simply be what would happen? Let us go find out.

WHAT IS CHANGED PERCEPTION?

The miracles in A course in miracles are change in perception, from seeing with the eyes of the ego to seeing with the eyes of the Holy Spirit and Christ, seeing from the right mind. The right mind sees unity whereas the ego sees separation.

The right mind sees with forgiveness; it overlooks the realities of this world to see the underlying unity of all things; it is purified seeing; it sees people in light forms whereas the ego sees people in dense forms living in space and time.

So, can we see people in light forms while we are on earth? Occasionally, when we totally forgive people we may momentarily see them in light forms but we quickly revert to seeing them in dense bodies.

Seeing people in light forms is akin to what "The law of one" by Ra calls level five living; here, eyes are so purified that the person is no longer in our world but in the world of light forms.

Holy relationships, seeing with the eyes of the Holy Spirit takes place at level five; holy relationships are forgiven relationships hence healed; in them people do not see with the separated eyes of the ego but with the unifying eyes of the Holy Spirit; it is not seeing as we do on earth but seeing in the light world (purified seeing).

Those in our world see with dense, separated, level 3 seeing. Level four seeing is still on earth but now folks recognize the need to love all to love themselves but they are still in human bodies not light bodies.

Level five seeing is seeing in the light. In level six people are no longer in human forms, dense or light but are disembodied ideas. At level seven people are now at the gate of heaven, they are ready to lose their sense of separation and individuality.

Level eight is akin to what Christians call heaven; in it there is no you and I, no subject and object, no seer and seen; all share one self and one mind. Here, there is one wave of spiritual light (called God) and each of us is a particle in it; wave and particle are one.

It is those in level eight that invent the various universes and then forget that they invented them and go live in them and eventually find out that they invented them.

They begin at level one (matter, space and time where there seem no consciousness), level two where animals and plants evolve and level three where some animals, us develop consciousness. We have already talked about levels four, five, six, seven and eight.

CONCLUSION

Let us, you and I, see if we can change our perception of reality and come to know what reality is!

Ozodi Thomas Osuji is from Imo State, Nigeria. He obtained his PhD from UCLA. He taught at a couple of Universities and decided to go back to school and study psychology. Thereafter, he worked in the mental health field and was the Executive Director of two mental health agencies. He subsequently left the mental health environment with the goal of being less influenced by others perspectives, so as to be able to think for himself and synthesize Western, Asian and African perspectives on phenomena. Dr Osuji’s goal is to provide us with a unique perspective, one that is not strictly Western or African but a synthesis of both. Dr Osuji teaches, writes and consults on leadership, management, politics, psychology and religions. Dr Osuji is married and has three children; he lives at Anchorage, Alaska, USA.